I love to cook for you,
Steam billowing from pans and your arms lazily draped over me,
Lips honeyed with ***,
Your pockets jingle with trinkets and you stir the pan,
Grazing the sauce with your eyes and the spoon,
After,
You'll bury your head in my neck and tell me I'm brilliant and you want to lie down,
I want years of you, decades,
I could drink crates of you and only want more.
The girl with pockets filled with tissues and one hand on a book and the other on my foot,
You hold my heart like chicken soup,
Bringing it right to your nose and tasting every drop.

The leaves on the tree outside my window get bigger by millimeters,
And the umami delight of marmite on crumpets is comforting and luscious,
One eye shut because the sun if filling it with heat and light,
This way I can still read my book in the sun,
These joys,
These small joys,
Which you have to take note of, you must,
Are endless;
Cold beer zapping my tongue like electricity, zing zing,
Dippy eggs with toast crunchy and eggs runny , salt flecked across the top,
Coconut hand-cream rubbed between each finger and thumb meticulously,
Music pouring through rooms into the flat and lilting in and out of earshot from outside, inside, next door and my radio,
Sparrows with their endless cheep cheeping,
Steam from strong black tea, gilded with rose, warming my hands nose and stomach,
The tiny hairs on raspberries, so soft and the juice so ****,
Plans to go no where, somewhere, the pub! A river! A farm! On a train! On a boat! On a bus!
Candles which pack the room full of floral, honeyed scents,
Crunchy apples,
Flaky pastry,
Warm bread,
The tsssssssttt when you open a can of Coke,
Lemons, just lemons,
The bbzzzz bbzzzz of my phone carrying I love yous, and for ***** sakes,
You have to take note of these joys, you must,
Because when I think about 16 women dead by lovers hands,
I feel I've hollow bones,
I need the beer, eggs, hand-cream, music, sparrows, lemons and bbzzzz, tea, bread, pastry and plans to keep me upright,
And I send thoughts of dippy eggs and lemons to those without.

I want to prepare food for you,
Chopping leeks and secretly dropping coriander into the pan,
I know you say you don't like it but you never notice and it really adds something,
The radio sings and fills the spaces between the smoke and steam and my thoughts,
I shout you alright, babe?,
You shout what?,
I walk over to the sofa holding a beer you chose and move towards you,
Grow towards you, lean over and press my cheek hard into your neck creases,
Your pulse thrumming through me like a train,
I close my eyes tight and think of all the times I was desperately alone,
In dark rooms in my mind,
Shall we cycle our bikes to the river tomorrow? you whisper into me,
Your breath warm and sweet,
I add salt to the dinner and you pull out a map and our days and nights are woven together by you looking at me looking at you.

Hot spring light pours into each room of my flat,
Cool air fills all the spaces left,
The steam from my mint tea lifts into my nose and reminds me of all the mint teas I've sipped over time,
In vast, cold cafes of museums with my mum,
In damp festival fields sprinkled in orange light from ferris wheels and burger vans,
In shaded gardens over lunch, brunch, tea and breakfast,
And on fiercely cold nights with candles flickering off of every wall, tea held right to my nose making my cheeks tacky from the steam.
There's comfort in mint tea, like crocheted blankets and gravy and hot mash and staring at a body of water when everything feels ******,
I could draw a map of me using mint tea as a compass,
Crisp, and hot.

When I cycle without holding the handlebars on my bike,
I wonder if I look arrogant,
Like a bit of a *****,
But
In winter I don't care
because as I let go
and straighten my back and lift my arms and open my mouth and breathe in the sea
I feel like a butterfly or a comorant or a bumble bee lifting and gliding and riding winter up and up and up,
I feel like a tiny yellow light has been lit like a candle at the base of my spine and the soft warmth from it is thawing my body from my ribs to fingers.

Winter wants to hurt me,
At least it feels that way,
Put a bag over my head and expect me to smile,
My scarf is making my neck sweaty and itchy and I'm sick of it,
The ice is creeping deep and deeper into my head,
Whispering words I thought I'd buried.

In books set against snowy backdrops with whisky in pubs and cable knit jumpers and hands to mouths,
Winter is warm and bubbling with atmosphere,
And though I've seen glimpses and sipped on spicy *** and given myself red wine teeth and sore fingers from sitting outside and laughed until my belly ached,
Today it just feels cold
Colder than cold,
Cold and hollow,

Unless I'm riding my bike with no handlebars and looking at the sea.

The light,
That sits in rain drops as they creep across windows,
Has to be magic.
It's so intensely filled with gold,
Like jewels in ***** hands,
I won't hear another word about it,
Magic.
And when we're walking towards a steamy windowed pub and the rain hits my glasses and the light from the street light pours in and fills them with that magic,
I have to stop and kiss you and tell you that tonight feels like a book,
A picture book,
With hand painted illustrations and neat boarders,
And autumn isn't so bad.

Sometimes your eyes have so much moving behind them,
I long to pull you into a field of buzzing wild flowers to listen to the grasses sing.

Sometimes I want to save you,
From the stones placed roughly on your chest.

But sometimes,
The answer is a baptism of hot bubbly water,
And silence,
Or noses pushed gently into sweaty necks,

Or best of all,
Vanillary skies arching over us like a tunnel of clouds and birds and blues and the sun is serene and bursting,
And our hands are lifting one another high, screaming from our lips,
'Isn't this great? I love you!'
As we walk together,
With ours eyes open,
And look up,
And listen to the grasses sing.